Contents

Editorial7

General/Theoretical/Historical Studies9

Regional Studies

Africa73

The
Americas101

Asia109

Australia
& Oceania133

Europe141

Periodicals Scanned161

Author Index163

Subject Index171

Editorial

This reference journal is published once a year and announces - in
English language – most new publications in the field of cultural/social
anthropology published in the German language area (Austria, Germany,
Switzerland). Since many of these publications have been written in German, and
most of these publications in the field of anthropology are not included in
major, English language abstracting services, Anthropological Abstracts(AA)
offers an opportunity and convenient source of information for scholars who do
not read German, to become aware of socio-cultural anthropological research and
publications in German-speaking countries. Included are journal articles,
monographs, edited volumes, exhibition catalogs, yearbooks, etc. Occasionally,
publications in English, or French, are included as well if the publisher is
less well-known internationally and if it is likely that such publications will
not be noticed abroad.

Additionally, a printed version of Anthropological
Abstracts is published with Lit Publishers, Muenster, Germany.

Some technical remarks

This reference journal uses a flexible approach: While publications are
represented in the form of abstracts in most cases, for edited volumes the Current Contents method is applied, i.e. only authors and titles appear. So
technically, this is a combined approach of an Abstracting Reference Journal
and the Current Contents method of listing names and titles only.

Abstracts supplied by authors are marked by ## before and after the
abstract. Due to space limitations they may be abbreviated. Up to three editors
of an anthology will be listed; if there are more, only the first will appear
(added by ‚et al.’).

Only those papers in journals will be abstracted that are relevant to
cultural/social anthropology - which mainly applies in the case of
interdisciplinary, or predominantly sociological journals. AA also tries to cover subjects related to, or influencing,
anthropology, i.e. if texts are relevant for present discourses. Thus, there
may be material from history, folklore studies, linguistics, sociology,
philosophy, etc., if there is an intersection with present debates in
anthropology.

Keywords serve as an "abstract of the abstract" - for a quick
assessment of the contents. Page numbers in the Subject Index refer to the page
where the Keywords listings appear.

The Subject Index – consisting
of the Keywords of abstracts in
alphabetical order – do not follow the Thesaurus principle but are chosen
rather loosely and generously, according to need, and there is no strict formal
rule or ‚normalization’ to limit their number. In many cases, Subject Index terms try to be specific
rather than general, in order to reduce the time of searching. Thus, if there
is a topic relating to ‚history’, it will be specified: like ‚history
(Guinea)’, or ‚history and literacy’, so that users do not have to check all
‚history’ entries.

Regarding alphabetical order, the German Umlaut (ä, ö, ü) will be broken
up into ae, oe, ue in the text, but is disregarded in the indexes.

The publishers, museums and research institutions must be thanked for
their generally prompt deliveries of the books requested for Anthropological Abstracts.

##Gender,
ethnicity, class in capitalism: About the intersection of social relations and
hegemonic constructions in processes of societal repro-duction

This article asks how far
social differentiation referring to gender and ethnicity as well as related
inequalities are not only a result of capitalist economy but a structural
feature of capitalism. The intersection of social relations and hegemonic
constructions are the subject of analysis. Arguments and insights of regulation
theory, feminist theory and men’s studies are discussed and continued. It is
shown how andro- and eurocentric orientations were an essential feature of
capitalism from its origin, and how they determined its historic specific
societal structures, societal orders and dynamics. This is discussed focusing
on the functional differentiation and the division of labour, inter- and
intra-societal relations and hegemonic constructions, and referring to
globalization and gender relations. It appears that historically capitalist
formation inevitably must be seen as based on gendered and ethnic domination,
but that there are also contingencies beside relations of subordination. New
arrangements of domination as well as tendencies towards equity emerge. In
conclusion, an epistemological outlook opens up for an analytical view in favor
of perspectives which transcend the critical reflection on the western
capitalist standpoint.##

The thirty papers in this festschrift, ten classical ones are reprints,
are dedicated to Jörg Bergmann, protagonist of ethnomethodology and conversational
analysis. The editors state that the two approaches have become increasingly
important in science and technology studies (ethnomethodology) and
interactional linguistics (conversational analysis) since the 1990s, and in
Germany this increase is attributed to Bergmann. The papers are grouped under
six headings – theoretical and historical perspectives, the social practice of
knowledge, interactive subtle structures in slow motion, interaction and the
integrity of body and soul, conversational practice and the micropolitics of
state power, and finally, what can be said and the unmentionable at the borders
of sociality.

This volume is the first social-anthropological introduction to the
field of the Science and technology studies in German language, discussing –
besides basic theoretical and methodological aspects – classical and recent
ethnographic contributions and the importance of materiality, knowledge and
practice and infrastructures and classifications for understanding science and
technology.

Since the attacks of September 11, 2001 and in debates on the „new
atheists“ a simplified juxtaposition of religion and (rational) critique has
become manifest. Contributions in the present volume, however, stress the
variety of criticism of religion. The papers ranging in time from Early
Modernity to the present discuss commonalities and differences of critiques of
religion in North and South America, Europe, India and China, and compare
methodological and theoretical approaches to religion and critique in
modernity.

The 15 contributions are based on a conference „The Research program of
field analysis“ in Potsdam in 2011. They build on basically two sociological
traditions: sociological neo-institutionalism of the 1980s and 1990s, and on
the other hand the cultural-sociological, genetic-structuralist constructivism
following the work of Bourdieu. And they show an affinity to recent
developments in the area of relational sociology and praxeological sociology.
The papers in the book strive to show – despite heterogeneity of objects of
research, definitions of notions etc. – that they all can be subsumed under the
common research program of „field analysis“.

The longevity of colonial economic and political structures makes one
frequently forget the deep-rooted changes of Sub-Saharan Africa during the last
50 years – mainly in society and culturally, but also in economy and politics.
The authors of the 23 papers in this book pose the question of „how
independent“ Africa really is, and which changes can be observed.

##Contributions on religion, the media, cities, film, literature, music,
or economics and politics trace the transformation process of recent decades
and present a wide-ranging and multilayered account of Africa as it exists
today. The essays also clearly demonstrate the longevity of the colonial
economic and political structures which are increasingly at odds with societal
and cultural dynamics. Today, it is above all the young cultural creators,
academics and religious groups who are testing new paths to independence by
dissociating themselves from the definitions of development and political
models formulated by the Global North and their own elites, and are hence
striving for „discursive sovereignty“ (Patrice Nganang).##

The author focuses on Foucault’s self-image as an anthropologist. Using
this perspective the author aims at describing a critical alternative to
modernity, inherent in his analyses of society and his
theoretical-methodological tools. The philosopher Foucault, who characterized
his research as an anthropology of one’s own culture, has been, according to
Birkhan, very much present in anthropology, and there has been the discussion
of Foucault as an anthropologist in philosophy, too. In her book, Birkhan deals
with the question of what and why Foucault criticizes, and she also presents
the perspective of his critique and implicit alternatives. The author opines
that Foucault’s negative critique of modernity follows a certain argumentative
logic, which represents a positivity. The chapters follow topics like:
distancing from modernity (including the Order of things), his anthropological
perspective (dealing with the Archaeology of knowledge); then the strategy of
ethnological change (epistemology of diversification, identity in modernity,
etc.), and the last chapter deals with questioning and revising the position of
the subject.

Victor W. Turneris among the
most influential anthropologists and cultural scientists after World War II.
Together with Clifford Geertz and Mary Douglas Turner stands for the
interpretive turn in the humanities. Inspired by his fieldwork among the Ndembu
in Africa he has focused on processes of change, conflict, and crisis. His work
on ritual, social drama, liminality, communitas etc. has been influential in
literary science, semiotics, historical science, theology, history of religion,
and sociology. The chapters deal with the Ndembu, British Social Anthropology,
the Manchester School, Turner’s catholic background, the analysis of symbols,
pilgrimage (with his wife Edith), and theater.

The production of knowledge
in Folklore Studies in the GDR. On the history of a discipline and its
elimination

Applying a perspective of the history of knowledge the author shows how
various practices of the production of knowledge in Folklore Studies in the GDR
have been generated, and how they changed in the course of social-political
discourse. In this way the author connects three levels: stragegies of folklore
studies actors in science and cultural practice, mechanisms of the scientific
system and the role of politics. This is backed by archival founds and oral
history interviews. In focus is Folklore Studies at the Deutsche Akademie der
Wissenschaften – the highest scientific institution in the GDR, the perspective
of the influential folklorist Adolf Spamer, connections with the arts in the
GDR, the Marxist perspective of Wolfgang Steinitz, how ethnography was taught
at the Humboldt University of Berlin and other internal structural and
content-related processes.

BROSIUS, CHRISTIANE& KARIN M. POLIT(Eds.)

Ritual, heritage and
identity. The politics of culture and performance in a globalised world

New Delhi: Routledge 2011

308 pp., price unknown; ISBN 0-415-67796-7

Keywords:
Ritual, heritage, identity, performance, globalization

##This book recognises ritualised performances as transnational and
cross-cultural phenomena, which are not only tied to and defined via national
territories and identities but which also demand new theoretical and
methodological approaches towards the discussion of rituals and heritage. It
explores the importance of ritual and ritual theory for discourses of
authenticity and originality, thereby depending our insight into concepts of
cultural heritage, identity and nation in a globalised world.##

CHARIM, ISOLDE, GERTRAUD AUER BOREA(Eds.)

Lebensmodell Diaspora. Über moderne Nomaden

Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag
2012

272 pp., Euro 24,80; ISBN 3-8376-1872-3

Keywords:
nomads, diaspora, identity, modern nomadism

The diaspora model of life.
On modern nomads

The 24 brief papers in this book are based on talks of the „Kreisky
Forum“, dedicated to the study of diaspora, over a longer period of time.
Authors are Benedict Anderson, Saskia Sassen, Homi Bhabha, G.C. Spivak, Zygmunt
Bauman, Ilija Trojanov, Natan Sznaider, but also less well-known scholars. The
editors state that: The dynamics of global economy generates an increasingly
unlimited mobility. While places and locations are able to follow the pull of
flexibilization, people in these places are still caught in ‚fixed’ and rooted
concepts of identity. However, cultures connected with nation states do not
provide ‚mental reserves’ for the life of modern nomads. Papers in this book
search for such a resource, taking diaspora as a repository of rich
experiences.

Without recurring to the situational analysis of Max Gluckman’s
Manchester School this sociological situational analysis follows the
sociological approach of the Grounded Theory by enlarging it and opening new
perspectives for qualitative research, i.e., in sociology: Precise mapping
methods generate differentiated and complex empirical studies. For this
purpose, interviews, ethnographic, historical, visual and other discursive
material is used, including multi-site research. So, discourse, action, action
and structure, image, script, and the historical dimension of phenomena produce
„thick analyses“. Situational maps show important human, non-human, discursive
and other elements and thus permit to analyze relations between them. Position
maps show what key positions are taken or not taken – the situation becomes the
analytical focus.

DAMME, WILFRIED VAN

Ernst Grosse and the birth
of the anthropology of aesthetics

Anthropos 107.2012:497-509

Keywords:
Grosse, E., aesthetics, anthropology of aesthetics

##It is generally held that anthropologists began methodically to
confront questions of aesthetics only in the latter part of the 20th century.
However, the philosopher and ethnologist Ernst Grosse (1862-1927) published
already in 1891 an essay suggesting that anthropology holds the key to solving
some of aesthetics’ most fundamental problems. He argued that such issues as
universalism and cultural relativism in aesthetic preference could only be
addressed fruitfully once anthropology’s empirical data and contextual and
intercultural perspective were are taken into account. In doing so, Grosse was
the first scholar to propose a systematic anthropological approach to
aesthetics.##

The 11 papers in this volume are based on the conference Religion and transformation in contemporary
European Society at the University of Vienna in 2011. The meeting has been
convened by the European Institute for Intercultural and Interreligious
Research. The perspective is that in recent years religion has become a
stronger focus in public, and that debates on religion and culture have
juridical and political implications. The recent decision of not allowing
minarets in Switzerland shows that issues like this one are of a more general
character dealing with the relation of religion and public. This pertains not
only to Islam, but to Christianity as well, the „secular“ state etc. The papers
discuss such issues from perspectives of several disciplines: social sciences,
law, political science, history of religion, theology.

The 12 papers are based on a meeting at the University of Frankfurt in
2011. The focus is that cultures constantly undergo changes, sometimes radical
ones. The papers tackle change from perspectives of the philosophy of history,
sociology, action theory and the cultural sciences.

From a sociological perspective, the authors oppine, „ethnography“ has
the flavor of „adventure“. As interactionists, they offer a „classical
practice“ going back to the roots of the Chicago School, where there is,
according to them, a stress on intersubjectivity, opennes, imponderability, and
creative opportunities. The book provides clues how to collect material,
perform analysis, and writing an analytically coherent field account, and how
to organize all of this. Focus is the interactionist tradition of seeing the
„reality of the field“ as primary reality which is not to be leveled off by
externally introduced theory or method.

##This volume envisions social practices surrounding mosques, shrines
and public spaces in urban contexts as a window on the diverse ways in which
Muslims in different regional and historical settings imagine, experience, and
inhabit places and spaces as „sacred“. Unlike most studies on Muslim
communities, this volume focuses on cultural, material and sensuous practices
and urban everyday experience. Drawing on a range of analytical perspectives,
the contributions examine spatial practices in Muslim societies from an
interdisciplinary perspective,an
approach which has been widely neglected both in Islamic studies and social
sciences.##

Landnahme, das Wachstumsdilemma und die „Achsen der
Ungleichheit“

##Landnahme,primary and secondary exploitation
and the “axes of inequality”

This contribution analyzes
relations between capitalist Landnahme, the current twofold—economic and ecological—crisis of capitalism and
social inequality. The core assumption is that capitalist societies need to
constantly seize non-capitalist social environments in order to safeguard
processes of dynamic self-stabilization. At present however, a tipping point
seems to have been reached as conventional economic growth, set to overcome
economic crisis, inevitably increases ecological dangers. Advanced capitalist
societies thus face a growth dilemma and it seems necessary to readjust the
“axes of inequality”. To this purpose a theory of capitalist Landnahmeis essential, as this
approach encapsulates an extended concept of exploitative relations, which
allows for a pluralistic understanding of social antagonisms and relations of
domination. This article offers a topical analysis of finance capitalism in
order to exemplify this approach. It argues that the Landnahmetheorem can be brought to
bear fruitfully as an analytical link between a theory of capitalism and
research in intersectionality.##

DÜCKER, BURCKHARD

Rituale

Erwägen
Wissen Ethik 23,2.2012:165-173

Keywords: ritual theory, ritual society, society and rituals

Rituals

##Ritual acts constitute the ›making of‹
individuals and institutions and their history. This article with its concept
of a ›ritual society‹ presents a systemic approach of ritual studies which
defines and investigates a social system as an entity of a ritually produced
network of connections.##

The book is divided in three sections: points of reference – presenting
authors and and their approaches (like Weber, Durkheim, Simmel, Bourdieu,
Giddens, Lefèbre, and the Chicago School and the Spatial Turn), then debates on
concepts such as the „European city“, postcolonial cities, transnational
urbanism, urban governance and city planning. The third section is devoted to
various topics, such as: segregation, social exclusion, neighborhoods, urban
milieux, multiculturality, mobility, crime, creative milieux, queer spaces,
Islam and city, urban art, public spaces, handicapped people etc. Thus,
according to the editor, the handbook offers an overview of present
sociological knowledge of these issues.

EUCKER, DENNIS

Poverty and vulnerability:
towards an integrated approach for research

##The objective of the present study is to provide an analysis of
existing research concepts of poverty and vulnerability that can help to build
the conceptual framework integrating the two notions. Definitions of poverty
will be examined and related to the existing concepts of vulnerability.
Vulnerability is discussed in more detail, and the difference is between
bio-physical and social vulnerability are presented and analyzed. The study is
based on the assumption that while available science has contributed a lot to
the understanding of poverty and vulnerability, there is an emergence of issues
not currently addressed in academic literature. Research therefore will benefit
from further integration of the two notions. The central concern of the study
then is to go beyond a needs-based understanding of poverty and to emphasize
its multidimensional nature that also stretches to the concept of social
vulnerability. It will be argued that the concept of vulnerability is hard if
not impossible to grasp when poverty is not defined in its multi-dimensional
facets.##

Borders of culture.
Autobiographies and travelogues between occident and orient

Starting point is the question of whether there are Arab or Turkish
autobiographies – dealing with theoretical questions touched by the book. The
next sub-chapter discusses the ‚western’ roots of the former question. The
author holds that it is not the schema of orient/occident to be applied in this
question but rather religion – in analyzing autobiographies. This includes
dealing with the essentialist statement that Arab or Turkish would lack
introspection and modern subjectivity. The authors conters this with a
qualified description of techniques of taking care of oneself – in the European
and Arabian fields. The empirical part discusses examples of autobiographies. Another
chapter deals with public and private education in the Ottoman Empire around
the turn of the 19th/20th century. Literary cases included are also de
Tocqueville’s book on democracy in America, and problematizing travel in
literary texts of Klaus Mann, Michel Leiris, Taha Husayn.

Patient-patient interaction
in a hospital ward with a concept in cultural psychotherapy

##Patient-patient interaction has been considered in psychiatric
research only to a lesser extent so far, even though patients spend a lot of
time together during therapies and recreation. At a ward for intercultural
psychiatry and psychotherapy in the Vitos Clinic Marburg, interactions of
patients with different cultural backgrounds where studied by using participant
observation and expert interviews as ethnographic methods. A timeframe of four
weeks was design for participant observation. Living together, joined therapies
and shared activities assist the Turkish and German patients to come in contact
with the other culture. Due to the mutual confrontation with every day
activities and needs of each other, patients get to know the foreign culture
better. Cultural interactions where observed primarily between women.
Especially language problems and formation of mono-cultural groups seem to
inhibit deeper intercultural interactions. Recommendations for intensifying the
intercultural exchange close this ethnographic article on the cross-cultural
interaction of patience at specialized psychiatric ward.##

Keywords:
bourgeoisie and art, art and bourgeoisie, inclusion and art, exclusion and art, power and art

The way the bourgeoisie
keeps fit. Modern art as a medium of power

##The sociological question is: Who benefits from modern avant-garde
art, as a medium of power? This paper deals not with the trivial neo-Marxian
theory of capitalism, but with the new theory of „bürgerliche Gesellschaft“, or
civil-bourgeois-creative society. After all attempts to liquidate the
structures and the classes of this special formation by non-civil societies of
modernity (fascism and communism), a civil-bourgeois-creative class appeared
during the 20th Century, like a Phoenix, what is deeply connected the
exhibition and the experience of modern Art. To understand the link between the
contemporary formation of society and the establishment of the cult of modern
art, it is helpful to contrast it with the other avant-garde art project of the
20th century: The latter reaches from Mexican Muralism to Socialist Realism and
promised an art revolution by including all non-bourgeois people (workers,
peasants and soldiers) within representational modern painting – it was the
modern art of inclusion. This avant-garde project was a means by which the
modern non-bourgeois mass aimed at taking control of society. In contrast,
abstract painting – and, as a result, all enigmatic art – is exclusive,
including only those members of society who dare to train their existential
creativity by dint of enigmatic art in social life. Graffiti or street art
doubles this „light“ enigmatic art at night. Modern abstract art is not
harmless, but it is an instrument of power of the civil-bourgeois-creative
middle classes, displayed after their annihilation experience during the 20th
Century.##

FROMM, MARTIN& ALEXANDRA SCHULZ

Texte im Völkerkundemuseum. Ein Werkstattbericht

Münster: Waxmann Verlag 2012

94 pp., Euro 22,90; ISBN 3-8309-2712-9

Keywords:
texts in museums, museology

Texts in museums of
anthropology. A workshop report

Objects in museums do not speak for themselves but one has to make them
speak – e.g. by textual information. This book shows and documents such work in
several projects – how to create understanding in the case of the largest group
of visitors: students/pupils. The book is a structured guide to create such
texts.

The articles in the book discuss the exegesis and productive
appropriation of anthropology as propagated by Wilhelm Dilthey and his school.
Central focus is the idea of the unfathomable – vita abscondita – since this
binds epistemological and ethical aspects together. In stressing the idea of
the unfathomable, the Dilthey tradition moves it into the center of
epistemology and with it the question of an appropriate understanding of
individual, creative phenomena of human life forms. This tradition replaces the
ontology of being and transcendentalism through a hermeneutics which interprets
the lifeworld as texture of relations and productive tension between individualities
and historical contexts. Topics of the articles/chapters include (among
others): „the whole human being“ in Dilthey and Plessner; Plessner’s
understanding of modernity; political culture as a game of civilization; „open
identity“; the impact of Dilthey’s notion of structure for anthropology and
psychology.

##Durkheim’s work constitutes a shared heritage for anthropologists and
sociologists. In the context of the increasing interest in his legacy, this
essay highlights some aspects of his thinking that are of current relevance in
social and cultural anthropology. Although Durkheim contributed substantially
to the development of anthropology in France, it is difficult to claim that he
was an anthropologist, because the discipline did not exist as such at the time
he was writing. A proper evaluation of his contribution to anthropology is
further challenged by the fact that his work on religion was exposed to intense
criticism, in particular from British social anthropologists. Instead of a
futile defense against the arguments of this criticism, I suggest a more
generalizing approach to some of Durkheim’s core concepts, in particular to his
concept of culture. Although Durkheim was not quite explicit about this term,
the profoundly anthropological character of his understanding of ‚culture’ is
obvious. In his perspective on culture, and, more specifically, in his
conviction that culture is something ‚made by people’ and as such is a
universal for mankind, he can be considered a precursor of constructivist
trends in anthropology.##

Searching otherness. History
of ethnology in the German Federal Republic 1945-1990

Haller reconstructs the history of the discipline in Germany. He starts
with a precursory chapter including roots in the general history of ideas in
the 18th and 19th centuries out of which „ethnology“ (Völkerkunde) emerged and
up to 1945 with a few pages on Völkerkunde during National Socialism. The
„reconstruction“ then starts with 1945 to 1955: the founding of two societies
and comments on major currents: empiricism, cultural morphology,
cultural-historical anthropology, ethnosociology – and their quarrels. The
consolidation phase is framed from 1955-1967, describing institutes, professos,
and museums, and again the two societies, but also student initiatives. This,
again, is discussed against the background of the aforementioned currents.
Then, the „rebellion“ era came, 1967-1977 – following the same setup of
institutes, professors etc., added by a few ‚new’ influences like cultural anthropology. Then, Haller sees
a time of stagnation between 1977-1990. Here he describes a ‚divide’ between
„established anthropology“ and currents such as neo-romanticism, interpretive
approaches, postmodernism, structuralism, medical anthro-pology. The last
chapter is under the heading of economization – 1989 until now.

Based on four studies of the German city of Wolfsburg by the authors
over the course of 50 years, the book portrays and analyzes community studies
of 22 other towns in the USA, Britain and Germany. The aim is to discuss the
contribution of community studies in understanding the city with regard to
local identification, and which perspectives this approach offers for the
future.

Keywords: creative
achievements, research and creativity, originality in research

What are creative achievements in research? Conceptual
reflections and cases from the history of science and bibliometric findings

##Science studies have not yet
provided a heuristic that distinguishes creative accomplishments from other
research contributions. Likewise, there is no commonly agreed typology of
creative scientific results. This article takes up these two desiderata. It is
argued that scientific creativity springs from the fundamental tension between
originality and scientific relevance. Based on this consideration, a heuristic
is introduced that singles out creative research accomplishments from other
contributions in science. Furthermore, it is shown that creative contributions
are not only advances in theory, but also new methods, new empirical phenomena,
and the development of new research instrumentation. The article introduces
examples from science history and presents results from bibliometric studies.##

HEMER, OSCAR

Fiction and truth in
transition. Writing the present past in South Africa and Argentina

##When I outlined the research 2006 I tried to formulate its subject
simply, as a question: What can fiction tell
us about the world, that journalism and science cannot?... One of the
fundamental premises of the investigation was, as I will explain in more detail
below, that my perspective primarily be that of a writer – not a researcher in contemporary literature, or any other
academic discipline...Thethe aim of my
thesis was, at the outset, to explore fiction as a „means of investigation“ and
as a „vehicle for social change“. The notion of social change has certain specific connotations, and may raise
expectations as to the applicability
of my findings... I stated as a hypothesis that the role of fiction, in a
social context, is primarily to be a
transgressive means of investigation and innovation, and secondly to serve as a vehicle for identification and empowerment.
Although I did not necessarily see a conflict between these two functions, my
suggestion was that the second would always be subordinated to the first.##

Following introductory chapters with his premises - on fiction(s) and
philosophy, the writer as researcher, and specifically the anthropological turn
of Writing Culture and the inherent „ethnography as hybrid textual activity“
(49), Hemer first deals with the case of South Africa, then Argentina. A short
chapter of conclusion then discusses the findings against the background of his
thesis „to explore fiction as a ‚means of investigation’ and as a ‚vehicle for
social change’“ (485).

All contributions have emerged from a focus on spaces of liminality – as
a specific facette in the theory of modernity; and the editors explicitly refer
to V. Turner here. Discussions among the participants were based on a research
group „Cultures of Madness“ sponsored by the German Research Council (Deutsche
Forschungsgemeinschaft).

Keywords:
privatization, state and economy, freedom of self, individual and state, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, economy and state, neoliberalism

Retreat of the state and
individual freedom. The privatization of existential infrastructures

The 14 papers in this volume are based on a conference in 2010 at the
University of Freiburg, Germany. Intellectual starting point of the editor has
been the retreat of the state from public structures and „tools“, and the
increasing independence of finance markets; i.e., it is the criticism of the
unresticted dynamics of the abstract notion of money. Hence, it is a criticism
of neoliberalism (not ordo-liberalism) whose early theorists extended the
notion of „freedom“ beyond individual persons to institutional economic actors.
Thus, the book is a stock-taking of decades of the unrestricted unleashing of
the finance market, and after the global financial crisis after 2007, by
economists, philosophers, and juridical specialists.

The author argues not to interpret pocession in an isolated away as in
biomedicine, but as an original way of communication of its own in human
societies. He shows with examples from the European history and from
anthropological field studies that the possessed person never loses its active
imagination, but inspires the broken imagination of men in situations of
crises.##

##Up to a few decades ago the anthropology of tourism was regarded as a
way to become involved in effortless researches in pleasant settings. Moreover,
tourism was portrayed as a sinister carrier of westernization, thus as a menace
to the subaltern societies that had to endure it. Nowadays anthropological
studies on tourism have established their own legitimacy due also to the
considerable socioeconomic significance of tourism in this age of hectic global
mobility. This book points out new and important research perspectives showing
the impact of tourism on the rural world. The articles presented are a major
and groundbreaking contribution to the analysis of the new rurality in global
society.##

During the museum boom of recent years numerous museums run by amateurs
have emerged. What are their motivations, and what attracts them to collect
things and exhibit them? The author has done research in three such museums, inspired
by Lévi-Strauss’s theory of the „savage mind“, framing these collections as
cultural practice. Using his bricolage
concept, Jannelli picks three such musuems and analyzes them, one in Berlin,
two near Hamburg, Germany. They are the (1) „McNair Museum in Berlin
Lichterfelde, run by a club or association of about 250 members. Its aim is the
documentation of the civil servants of the armies of the three Allied Forces
after World War II. The second (2) is the Museum Elbinsel Wilhelmsburg, part of
Hamburg, a museum dedicated to the heritage and culture of the Wilhelmsburg
locality and community. The third is the (3) Bienenmuseum Moorrege, also near
Hamburg, devoted to beekeeping activities in this area. Besides descriptive
chapters, the author discusses the societal relevance of museums, museums as
„agents of social inclusion“, and as a space for symbolic agency.

The early history of cultural psychiatry from the 1800s to 1971 is
outlined as evolving under the influence of prevailing contemporary tendencies,
represented by the main authors and actors: (1) 19th Century focus on
civilization and mental health; (2) the dawn of comparative cultural psychiatry
(ca.1890-1925); (3) the influence of psychoanalytic theories (ca.1913-); (4)
psychopathology labeling of peoples and cultures (ca.1900-1950s); (5) cultural
relativism of mental disorders (since 1930s) and related ethno-psychiatric
field researches; (6) the establishment of cultural/ transcultural psychiatry
as academic discipline and organized endeavor (1956-1971).##

Gift, gratefulness and
recognition. Reflections on Paul Ricoeur’s notion of the gift

##Paul Ricoeur connects the philosophical concept of recognition to the
ethnological analysis of ceremonial gift exchange by focusing on the term
‚gratitude’. Particularly by means of a content analysis of the French word
‚reconnaissance’ (recognition) Ricoeur demonstrates that the term
‚reconnaissance’ is closely linked with the notion of gratitude. ThusRicoeur broadens the philosophical concept of
‚recognition’, that is mainly defined in reference to the influential idea of
an endless ‚struggle for recognition’ (Kampf um Anerkennung) as Friedrich Hegel
puts it. Ricoeur outlines the interesting idea that gratitude binds donor and
recipient together and that the ceremonial gift exchange symbolises the mutual
recognition of donor and recipient. Hence the experience of the gift should be
understood as the experience of being recognised. I wish to pursue these
considerations by arguing that the gift exchange can only then be considered as
establishing a mutual recognition if the gift itself is also recognised and
acknowledged as such. As Marcel Mauss demonstrated this is the case in
traditional societies. As soon, however, as the gift loses this special capacity
to express recognition, the mutual recognition of donor and recipient will be
lost.##

Contemporary theories of society
and gender research. An invitation to dialog

The editors invite to discuss contemporary theories of society, which
had a reception in gender research, in order to create a more systematic dialog
between theories of society and gender research. Referring to common categories
the 10 contributions in this book include the original context of the theories
of society and the frame of reception that was relevant at the time of
generation, and they aim to include gender as a self-evident part in those theories
of society. To do so, the location of gender in the respective theory is
determined, and starting points for comparing the theories as well as further
dialog of theories of society and gender research are shown.

The authors classify „cultural theory“ like this: Cultural theory is
divided in four types of cultural shapes: hierarchists, individualists,
egalitarians, and fatalists. They adopt Mary Douglas’s grid/group model,
stating that it has been discussed widely in England and the US, but not in the
German language area. The authors thus want to operationalize Douglas’s model
in communikation, marketing and management. After presenting and describing the
model, norms and culture theory are discussed (universalism or relativism),
then marketing, household structures, cultures in companies/enterprises and
cultural theory, and finally risk management in this context.

Ritual design. On the
analysis of new rituals in cultural and ritual sciences

The contributions of this volume are based on work of the Spectial
Research Unit of Ritual Dynamics
(Sonderforschungsbereich 619), sponsored by the German Research Council (DFG).
The papers are devoted to definitions of ‚ritual design’, or to critically
assessing such definitions.

Of new cabinets of
curiosities. Commuters of borders between anthro-pology and art

##Newspapers are announcing the renaissance of the Kunstkammer“, more
and more contemporary collectors apply to the objects of the old „Kunst- and
Wunderkammer“ and also artists are dealing with this topic. But why? Is in the
old Kunstkammer the key to explain and understand the present in a better way?
Maybe. The flexible concept of the Kunstkammer makes it possible to pick up
actual topics and problems. The following article deals with a history of the
old Kunstkammer in Berlin and the new ones: Private and institutional
collections are using more and more concepts of the Kunstkammer as well as
contemporary artists.##

KIENER, WILMA

Leben und Sterben bei den Leinwandvölkern. Todesrituale im Spielfilm

Berlin: Bertz + Fischer 2012

202 pp., Euro 25,-; ISBN 3-86505-393-0

Keywords:
movies and dying, dying in movies, film and dying, values and dying, screen cultures, death in movies, visual anthropology

Living and dying among the
screen peoples. Death rituals in movies

Dying and death are among the central areas of research in anthropology
– with non-western cultures being the main focus. The author asks what our
(i.e. western) ideas and images of death are. An anthropological approach
allows for assessing the topic impartially and – seemingly – naively. To tackle
this question she asks: „how do film heroes die?“. This, according to the
author opens a new theoretical approach. She translates notions in movies into
anthropological ones: stereotypes into rituals, and genres are screen worlds.
In seeking hidden ideas of values of our times she finds in performances of
death in movies a fruitful motif. She analyzes 25 comedies, dramas and action
movies, and also asks what messages are inherent in them. As to values, in the
end Kiener asks what kind of ‚life force’ is mediated in these films, what kind
of hope or optimism is generated. One of them is, for the viewers, the
physiological aspect of the activation of adrenaline – according to Oliver
Stone (177): „they all feel a heightening of reality“. All of these aspects are
discussed on a theoretical level, too (Baudrillard, M. Bloch, Gadamer, Groys,
Merleau-Ponty, T. Turner etc.).

Keywords:
performances and space, public space performances, politics of public space

Choreo-politics. Political
negotiation of public space in performances

##Performances have a prevalent contemporary and experimental theatrical
practice of the visual and performing arts since the 1960s. They emerged out of
a critique of the established art scene and have made a critical reflection of
the basic elements of the established artistic forms, practices, institutions
and formats. With focus on transgressing the limits between art and popular
culture and art and everyday life, artistic performances have often led from
established artistic institutions, such as the theater and museums, into public
spaces. Thus, the order, norms and conventions of the public space have been
questioned by interventionist activities. Since then, dance, as an ephemeral
art, and choreography, as the organization of movement in the situational
performance (emphasizing the moment and the presence), have played particular
roles. In contemporary societies, artistic performances as critical practices
are exposed to new questions, as the current constellations characterized by a
theatralization and eventisation of the public space and by the public staging of
control performances.##

Köhler describes the emergence of anthropology, or ethnography, in
Russia as an academic discipline, situated in the border areas of imperial
action, scientific enthusiasm and new boldness. Reports of major research
expeditions of the 18th century to Siberia and the Caucasia are analyzed – with
the focus on the development of an „ethnology“ in Russia. Questions of the
author are: What is the purpose of the Russian Imperium to study ethnic groups
at her borders? How did members of the expeditions, mostly Western Europeans,
perceive the ethnic groups and how were they described? How did the center
react to the increasing complexity of this multiracial state? Köhler thinks
that the blueprint of European global expansion was not primarily the reason,
but that there were other cognitive interests and strategies: Instead, they
were based on an intrinsic (Russian) emergence of scientific disciplines at
that time, described by the author as the „scientification of the imperial
nexus“; ethnography as „identity politics of the imperial agent“; alterity (of
the ethnic groups) was remodeled into an aesthetic category – being part of
other imperial discourses as in the arts.

In the third edition the author has re-worked a chapter on ‚contemporary
ethnology’ which was added in the 2nd edition (2000) – and which now goes under
the title of „After Writing culture“, or, Anthropology in the 21st century.

##Through the expansion and development of communication techno-logies,
transnational families are presently experiencing that they are close despite
the great geographical distances between them. On the basis of a qualitative
study with transnational families, I show that this virtual closeness at the
distance brings out new practices of familiarity, on the one hand, but also
produces conflicts and dilemmas, on the other. While the new technologies of
closeness enable forms of everyday interactions over great distances, the
compression of time and space does not take place in a vacuum. Instead, family
members are positioned at interfaces of structures of difference and
inequality, which decisively influence access to and use of the new
technologies and which have far-reaching consequences for the transnational
family configurations.##

The whereabouts of religion.
On the ambivalence of religion in modern society

Can one attribute a diminishing influence and meaning of religion in
modern society? Or can one rather attest to a renaissance? There is much
controversy on these questions in various disciplines. Krech covers the
following aspects of these processes: paradigms of religion-sociological
theory, semantic aspects of religious experience as a communicative issue,
social-structural aspects of the emergence of organized religions, structural
aspects in society – the problem of the process of secularization, religion and
culture, religions of the individual, political religion, religion and arts.
The epilogue deals with the notion of postsecularity, religious practice and
its communication, immanent sacralization, functional equivalents of religion,
and future potential of religion.

##The
symbolic value of popular music. Genesis and structure of the pop music field

Based on an interpretation of
the art theory of Pierre Bourdieu, which is aimed primarily at the neglected
relationship of class and field, the essay is dedicated firstly to a critique,
informed by theory, of the studies of the cultural omnivore. These are based on
the assumption that today the correlation between musical taste and social
structure is no longer determined bywhichbut rather byhow manymusical genres are preferred. For this reason
they are supported by the conception of an erosion of musical legitimacy
hierarchies. However, with the help from Bourdieu’s field theory and from the
reference to the mutual relationship of production and reception, it can be
shown that such legitimacy hierarchies have by no means disappeared. An
analysis of the representation of pop music in the media and in the education
system indicates the simultaneous legitimation and differentiation of pop.
Against this background the thesis can be formulated that people with a great
deal of cultural capital still prefer the legitimate culture, namely under the
condition of a changed consensus of legitimacy.##

KRÜGER, GUNDOLF, ULRICH MENTER& JUTTA STEFFEN-SCHRADE(Eds.)

Tabu?! Verborgene Kräfte – Geheimes Wissen

Petersberg: Imhof Verlag
2012

319 pp., Euro 24,90; ISBN 3-86568-864-4

Keywords:
taboo, ritual, magic

Taboo?! Hidden powers –
secret knowledge

This is the catalog of the exhibition of the ethnographic collection at
the Landesmuseum Hannover, Germany, added by objects from other collections
within the range of Lower Saxony. The book has seven scholarly articles (on
Micronesia, Polynesia, West- and Central Africa, on shamans, Tibetan Buddhism,
and Chinese sources). The focus of the exhibition is thus on „human social life
beyond official laws“, on „secret knowledge“, ceremonies, rituals, magic.

Religion and religious plurality have been increasingly highlighted in
societal discussion during recent years. The discussion includes
secularity/-ism, a revival of religious phenomena, tension between politics and
congregations, controversies on the role of religion in processes of migration
and integration, and questions on the emergence of religious identities. The 20
papers originate in an interdisciplinary meeting including historians,
historians of religion, sociologists, anthropologists, etc.

The author sees a declining role of anthropology using audio-visual methods
in present-day Germany, even though audiovisual media are among the most
privileged sites of the construction of cultural and social reality. Even
though there is an increasing number of anthropologists reflecting on questions
on the mediality of culture, they almost exclusively do this in the written
form. And even though there is a sizeable number of highly motivated students
interested in an anthropology using audiovisual media, one can see hardly any
individuals in the new generation of academics. The author describes the
situation in various settings in Germany and also abroad.

Shamefulness, guilt,
responsibility. On the cultural foundations of morality

Lotter starts, as a foundation, with a consideration of ‚the person’
which includes the juxtaposition of ‚thin’ and ‚thick’ description, exemplified
in Bourdieu’s study of the Kabyle. Then follow ‚sources of morality on a rather
abstract level (social sanctions, external and internal sources of morality,
the Kantian theory of the immanent law, normative identity). The next chapter
deals with self-consciousness – Christian (expulsion from paradise) and Lockean
self-consciousness, and the function of shamefulness. Following chapters are
on: shamefulness related to the ‚autonomous person’; guilt and moral liability,
and respect between persons. The next section deals with responsibility in
contexts: in individual actors, responsibility of the scapegoat, taboo and sin,
etc. Last chapters are: Law and justice, and the construction of responsibility
in criminal law. Anthropological perspectives and authors are used profusely.

MARSCHALL, WOLFGANG, PAOLA VON WYSS-GIACOSA& ANDREAS ISLER(Eds.)

Genauigkeit: Schöne Wissenschaft

Bern: Benteli Verlag 2008

303 pp., price unknown; ISBN 3-7165-1541-9

Keywords:
exactitude, aesthetics, shamanism, possession, Oppitz, M.

Exactitude: Beautiful
science

The title of this book, which is dedicated as a hommage to Michael
Oppitz, is based on Oppitz’s book on the „art of exactitude“, meaning and
alluding to Lévi-Strauss’ structuralist approach (classification etc.) which
was embraced by Oppitz. About 35 brief papers, and many photographs, deal with
exactitude, aesthetics, shamanism, possession and the like in various settings
around the world, written by authors of like leanings.

Deep sea mining and
intermediality. Sarah Zieruls book „Battle for the deep sea“

Meier discusses, based on Eva Hohenberger, non-film- and pre-film
reality, and the reality of film and film reality. She analyzes the genre of
film in the case of the economic-political fight for the deep see, citing
several cases, kinds of resources and raw materials hunted for etc.

MUEHLEBACH, ANDREA

Times of neoliberalism

Etnofoor 24.2012:165-169

Keywords:
neoliberialism and time, time and neoliberalism, religion and neoliberalism, Silicon Valley cultures

##In a recent article on the public culture of temporality in the neoliberal us, Jane Guyer argued that it was possible to detect a
shift away from ‚near future' and ‚near pasť forms of temporal orientation
towards a combination of intense presentism and the very
long-term horizons of 'fantasy futurism' (2007: 409). Presentist and fantasy futurist temporal frames, she argues, are most explicitly manifest in current macro-economic (specifically, monetarist) and fundamentalist Christian reasoning; both analogously couple the immediacies of choice and of the
divine to ‚projection and prophecy' (which themselves are future oriented but
may also draw on resources of the very 'distant past').
Guyer thus differs from David Harvey and Frederick
Jameson’s focus on speed, acceleration, and 'space-time
compression as frames for understanding the temporal contemporary.##

From the Christian background of the complex of guilt/debt and atonement
Müller unfolds a diachronic panorama of ‚universal’ human behavior starting
from prehistory, even the Palaeolithic Age. This ‚universal’ cult centered
around ‚sacramental’ consumption – of plants or meat. Also, human scapegoats
are described in early high cultures of (tribal and Vedic) India, Judaism
(Mishna) as a model for Jesus, and other examples from around the world reminding
of the passion of Jesus, then the ‚passion of the king’ and his rebirth.
Arguments are based on archaeological finds, textual evidence and secondary
literature, e.g. the deification of nutritional plants as ‚the heavenly child’
(69), celebrated in an annual ritual of his ‚rebirth’, but also interpretation
is used to form the overall message of the study. Such early interpretations of
myths are then combined with findings for instance of the 18th century myths of
the Tunguse and other northern peoples, who saw bears as being of heavenly
descent and subjected them to a guilt-removing cult.

In the words of the author: Christians see the passion of Jesus as a
singular and exceptional process. Christian imagination emerged in a specific
cultural environment. Much of it goes back to oriental models/examples. Myth
and cult of old-oriental grain deities like Tammuz, Osiris and others have been
the blueprint for the passion of Jesus. Sons of the celestial god and the
goddess of earth were killed at harvest time, to keep men alive, and are
resurrected annually. Thus, the debt/guilt of men seemed to be atoned. To be
sure of this salvation process, the sacrifice of the god was ritually enacted,
often incarnated as a young bull (sometimes a human being). Thus, a rather uniform
custom of this kind was practiced in all agrarian cultures. They adopted a
ritual originating in hunting cultures, where a bear had the role of the
savior.

Anthropological aesthetics
of religion. Workshop at the Conference of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für
Völkerkunde at Halle (Saale) 2005

Not only man, but gods, too, are receptive to beauty. Ist power of
seduction can overcome the power of everyday life and doom. Anthropological
aesthetics of religion aims to trace the power of aesthetics through cultures and
religions, but finds out that neither gods nor men share like predilections.
Anything, wheter simplicity or extravagance, renunciation or obscenity,
cleanliness or eroticism – can be aesthetical for the believers.

Religion as power factor.
Forms of religious influence on politics and society

How do religions define their position in state and society? How do
religious institutions and carriers of functions exert secular influence? And
how does this influence the religious self of religious communities? The
authors analyze the influence of religions on politics and society in case
studies of history and the present. The stress is on Christianity, but also on
comparative studies on Islam and Judaism. The interdisciplinary contributions
connect external views of the disciplines of religion, the social sciences and
history with a theological view from the inside. Topics range from Christianity
in Late Antiquity to churches in modern German society. Singular actors and
roles such as Billy Graham and Ian Paisley are focused, the influence of
churches on societal transformation processes in South America and South
Africa, in Israel and Shiite clerics in Iran.

For almost two years, a team of anthropologists was
teaching media anthropology to 7th to 9th graders in an ethnically mixed and
socioeconomically underprivileged part of Bern. Like Jean Rouch’s protagonists
in Moi, un noir,the adolescent film makers started to explore
their urban environment, performing scenes from their daily life and expressing
thereby their dreams and fantasies. This article interprets Rouch’s proceedings
in Moi, un noir as an early form of
performance ethnography and re-examines Rouch’s methods half a century after
their invention in a new, transnationalised environment.##

This is a follow-up book to the author’s voluminous Die Geschichte der Ethnologie (History
of Anthropology, 2004) which was an overview from the beginnings. The
present book deals with the last fifty years, actually the time of questioning
old convictions, from Malinowski to Lévi-Strauss’s structuralism. So the ‚new
time’ is characterized by insights like the end of metanarratives, the end of
all-round scholars (like Lévi-Strauss). So, in this book movements of recent
decades are described, dealing with globalization, world systems, spaces,
contemporary settings, orientations like postcolonialism, hybridity,
subalternity and resistance, inter-connectivity.

This exhibition catalog of the Ethnological Museum at Berlin has nine
articles introducing and contextualizing the objects – the aim is to qualify/
differentiate (often stereotyping) views of Islam and Muslims.

Nomadism in the Old World.
Forms of representation in past and presence

These papers are based on the interdisciplinary working group of
„Representation“ of the „Sonderforschungsbereich/Special research area 586 –
Difference and integration. Repercussions between nomadic and sedentary
civilizations in the Old World“ of the DFG (German Research Council) at the
University of Leipzig and Halle. The papers by anthropologists, archaeologists,
historians and orientalists discuss forms of the representation of nomadism
from a historical and anthropological perspective.

PRAGER, LAILA: Einleitung:
Repräsentationen von Nomaden und Sesshaften in der „Alten Welt“ [Introduction:
Representations of nomads and sedentary people in the Old World]

MAISEL, SEBASTIAN: Who is right? Legal
representation within the tribal society of Saudi Arabia

ISTOMIN, KIRILL: The land to herd and the
space to travel: Comparing the categorizations of landscape among Komi and
Nenets reindeer herding nomads

REUTER, JULIA& ALEXANDRA KARENTZOS(Eds.)

Schlüsselwerke der postcolonial studies

Wiesbaden: VS Verlag 2012

375 pp., Euro 39,99; ISBN 3-531-17577-5

Keywords:
postcolonial studies, colonialism, alterity, representation

Key authors of postcolonial
studies

The 28 papers of this volume discuss key works of postcolonial studies –
from Freud via Lacan and B.S. Cohn to Bhabha, Stuart Hall and many others.
Postcolonial studies critically assess colonial structures of societies and
representations of alterity and self – up to the present. The papers show the
multi-vocality of postcolonial discourse by presenting on the one hand central
texts of the authors above. On the other hand the reception and history of
postcolonial perspectives is described: in literary science, political science,
media science, religious studies, anthropology, sociology and history of art.
Thus, the book is not only a textbook on the subject but contributes to theory
also.

RÖDER, BRIGITTE, WILLEMIJN DE JONG& KURT W. ALT(Eds.)

Alter(n) anders denken. Kulturelle und biologische Perspektiven

(Kulturgeschichte der
Medizin 2)

Köln: Böhlau Verlag 2012

441 pp., Euro 69,90; ISBN 3-412-20895-0

Keywords: age, ageing, old age, culture and age, biology and age

Thinking age(ing)
differently. Cultural and biological perspectives

Twenty contributions from biology, social sciences including
anthropology and cultural-historical disciplines describe and document the
great cultural variety of the last decades of life. They do so in various
cultures: in pre- and early historical communities, high cultures of antiquity
in the Mediterranean, to present-day societies. This wide selection, including
case studies from the Netherlands, Ghana, Sulawesi, urban Burkina Faso, Sri
Lanka etc., present greatly differing historical and current social life worlds
and realities.

In 23 papers the contributors present studies on purity on a theoretical
level and in concrete studies: in Hittite Anatolia, Mesopotamia, Egyptian
purification rituals, Greek ritual purity, Jewish ritual purity, Nepalese
aspects of purity, memory in the Middle Ages,Hindu rituals, Buddhist notions on purity, various aspects of purity in
Islam, cases from Central Asia and Mongolia, and of course Protestant-Western
notions of purity.

## Concepts of purity and impurity are used in a great variety of
contexts for both concrete and immaterial phenomena and are firmly embedded in
many, often antagonistic, worldviews. Can a common core be discerned in the
various ways purity is conceived, extending over and beyond cultural
differences? Both change and continuity in purity and its (corresponding)
discourses afford insight into the dynamics of social transformativeprocesses. They form the perspective to apply
purity concepts and submit them to personal interpretation. Though usually
combined with, or even tantamount to, ritual action these concepts seem to lend
themselves particularly to being de-ritualized and then re-ritualized.##

The author of this essay starts from the premise – shared by Werner
Herzog – that images mediated by film etc. actively contribute to
historiography by producing imaginations, dogmas, views and perspectives. In
this way, Scheibe discusses and analyzes Herzogs „documentaries“, compares them
with other filmmakers like Jean Rouch, Gardner and others.

##Harmless or funny or racist? We all remember the catchy melody and the
controversy about insulting terms like „Negro“. What was the purpose of this
children’s book for us in Europe and the U.S.? To promote colonialism,
exploitation, or to serve as a means of education? Where does a thinking that
downgrades Africans and Blacks come from? Are these questions outdated? Not at
all: in an immigration society we cannot avoid to address such issues – in every
day life as well as in education.## This profusely illustrated book centers
around the children’s book of the same title that was translated into many
languages and was published in many countries. The chapters discuss the current
situation – political correctness and self-censorship, the origin of the „Ten
little niggers“, a historic reconstruction of colonialism and racism in this
context between the USA to Europe and back (anti-racist attempts of
sensitization). The book also includes a worldwide list of publications of the
book.

The notions of health and diesease form the basis of medicine and public
health. Hence, the debate on a suitable definition is of great societal
importance. Eleven papers by philosophers, historians of medicine and others
focus on topics such as: definition of disease from various angles, Darwinist
perspectives, the World Health Organization, a theory of health, and the notion
of psychic and psychiatric diseases.

SCHÜLEIN, JOHANN AUGUST& GERALD MOZETIC(Eds.)

Handlung. Neue Versuche zu einem klassischen Thema

Wiesbaden: VS Verlag 2012

245 pp., Euro 29,99; ISBN
3-531-18791-4

Keywords:
action theory, Balog, A., theories of action

Action. New approaches to a
classical topic

The contributions frame sociological action theory in different ways, in
order to further new ways. They are based on meetings and workshops of the
theoretical section of the „Österreichische Gesellschaft für Soziologie“.

Towards the end of the 19th century, colonialism became euphoric in
Bavaria, too, and many local and regional activities took place. There were
groups of the German colonial society (Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft), shows of
e.g. African cultures and peoples were organized, ‚homeland’ evenings were held
in favor of soldiers in colonized countries, an exhibition in Munich was
planned, a museum in Regensburg was built, and there was a Colonial Forestry
School in Miltenberg. The author unfolds a complex historical picture of these
activities, involving the state, monarchy, anthropology/ethnology, missionaries
etc.

This article
presents results of a validation study dealing with the problem of truthful
answers in surveys. Based on a mail survey of about 300 respondents who had
committed one or more minor criminal offences in recent years and had been
convicted of them in court we examine how many respondents include a confession
in the question naire and what factors influence the tendency to give truthful
answers. The set of influential factors which is analyzed is derived from
different versions of rational choice theory. Selected findings: About two
thirds of the total sample contain elements of confession. Women tend to deny
their deviant behavior more often than men, older people more often than
younger ones, and more highly educated respondents more frequently than less
educated ones. The theoretically relevant variables "need for social
approval" and "trait desirability" show significant effects on
the probability of telling the truth. Particular attention is owed to the
finding that those respondents who answered with a time delay, that is, send
back the questionnaire late, clearly gave less valid answers.##

The editors start from the observation that war and civil society seem
to belong to two opposed states of affairs: the disorder of violence, versus
civil interaction without violence. The contributions aim to qualify this
simplistic assumption, discussing close relations of war and civil society,
like interconnections between war, politics, and civil society; relations
between the military and society; the role of civil societal actors and
institutions in the context of so-called „little wars“ particularly regarding
Africa. Conclusions
tend to be unsettling.

##Religion
and economy. Mauss, Simiand and the Durkheimian program

The text points out that,
with regard to the sociology of economy, Emile Durkheim’s work encompasses two
research programs. The focus of the first program lies in the critique of
economic categories as well as the institutions that function according to the
market system. The second program, initially developed inThe Elementary Forms of
Religious Life, argues that there is a relation between religion and economy. While
the former perspective is being developed by the Durkheim-follower François
Simiand (and Maurice Halbwachs) the latter is enhanced by his student Marcel
Mauss. In the course of the 1930s both perspectives converge in the works on
the gift and on money. Finally the text formulates the hypothesis that
Durkheim’s perspective can be used in order to update Max Weber’s question
concerning the relation between the religious ethic and the modern economic
world.##

In Germany, Baudrillard is mostly known for his influential diagnoses of
current times and the age of media, and he has coined the notions of
simulation, simulacra, and hyperreality in this context. He has also worked on
the economy of the sign, the order of consumerism, the system of everyday
items, the implosion of the social, the end of history, the displacement and
suppression of death, and also 9/11. Chapters include a sketch of his life, the
theory of consumerism, sign economy and symbolic exchange, death, work and the
unconscious, the theory of simulation, history in the age of simulation, and
metaphysics at the end of the world. And the author describes Baudrillard, the
sociologist, philosopher and media theoretician, also as a pataphysician.

SWINNEN, AAGJE& JOHN A. STOTESBURY(Eds.)

Aging, performance and
stardom. Doing age on the stage consumerist culture

##In aging studies, age, like other salient markers of identity, is
defined not in terms of being but of doing. One and adjusts automatically to
the implicit norms of age-appropriate behavior that structure everyday life. In
western culture, these norms install a hierarchical dichotomy between the young
and the old – the latter still getting the worst of it. This second volume in
the aging studies in Europe series focuses on questions concerning the ways in
which actors and socialites perform aging on the stage of consumerist culture.
How do celebrities, whose star personae are ultimately connected with the prime
of their lives, cope with the aging process? Which public practices invite
supplement adjustment of age scripts that focus on the decline of physical
strength and attractiveness as the years pass?##

KAPLAN, E. ANN: The unconscious of age:
Performances in psychoanalysis, film, and popular culture

DOLAN, JOSEPHINE: The queen, aging femininity and the recuperation of the monarchy

STALPAERT, CHRISTEL: Staging age and aging in The rite of spring: Reconstruction or
critical intervention?

##“Even
in our secular age the gods are born within the masses”. Emile Durkheim’s views
on the emergence of social ideals in modernity

The article focuses on Emile Durkheim’s
complex and changing views concerning the evolution of morality and religion
under conditions of modernity. While he foresaw a progressive weakening of
traditional religions, Durkheim did not believe that modern societies would
lose any sense of the sacred. He was convinced that a functioning morality
needs a sacred object at its core. In modern times, with the increasing
separation of religion and morals, the sacred object of morality is the human
person. The article presents and discusses the account given by Durkheim of the
emergence of the moral ideal of the person. It shows that Durkheim’s work
contains two distinct accounts of this process: according to the course onProfessional Ethics and
Civic Morals, the modern ideal of the person is to a large extent a product of the
state. In later texts, including theElementary Forms of Religious Life, Durkheim increasingly
empha-sized the role of society itself: he tried to show, using examples from
the French Revolution in particular, how ideals are forged in those particular
moments of social excitation he used to call “collective effervescence”.##

Morals
and moral orientations are a prominent subject in sociological discourse and
research; how our "conscience" functions and expresses itself in
specific everyday situations, however, is a topic rarely addressed by
sociologists. Compared to more narrowly defined concepts of self-control or
moral consciousness the concept of conscience covers a broader scope of
meanings which emerge from the complex interplay between moral insights and
feelings, or from interconnections between sentiment, interpretation and
behavior. In exploring the concept of conscience sociologically we first draw
upon system-theoretical considerations as advanced by Niklas Luhmann. We then
contrast Luhmann's assumptions about specific functions of morals and
conscience with the cognitive approach to analyzing the development of moral
consciousness and the minimalistic concept of universally valid moral rules
associated with it. The type of morals thus conceptualized poses unanswered
questions of motivation. Partial solutions are offered by Kant's ideas about
moral feelings and Randall Collins' concept of interaction rituals. The
"either-or" position, viz. reason vs. feelings in the constitution of
moral insight and moral commitment, can be overcome with Hans Joas' theses concerning
the genesis of values and value-commitment. Based on Joas' ideas, we propose
conceiving of "conscience" as a way of articulating moral experiences
shaped by the dynamic interplay of (possibly) intense feelings, reflexive
thinking, and culture-based interpretations.##

THURN, HANS PETER

Soziale Welt in Farben

Sociologia Internationalis 50.2012:167-184

Keywords:
colors and social world, communication and color, power and color, color and politics

The social world in colors

##Like the world as a whole,
social life has revealed itself two people through colors. Colors are no different
from words and body language; they are an essential medium of social
communication. Concurrently, they are subject to societal scaling. Throughout
the course of history, specific traditions and conventions have developed in
the social usage of colors. The coloristic regulation systems of the
interactions between individuals and groups are strongly related to the
interdependencies our societal formations of classes, stratifications and
institutions. These relationships have again succumbed to change. Colors have
become involved early on in the maelstrom of political, economic and cultural
power struggles. How such socio-chromatic arguments are performed and which
changes have occurred is discussed in this article via literary testimonials
and historical examples.##

Keywords:
history of anthropology, politics in anthropology, Leipzig anthropology

Experiencing anthropology. A
look back at the history of anthropology at the University of Leipzig,
1951-1993. Edited by Barbara Treide

This volume, edited by his wife, has been published posthumously. It
describes the history of the institute, from the early days of the former
German Democratic Republic (the „socialist era“) until 1993, after the
re-unification of Germany. Thus, political processes of change in the latter
part of the book are described in detail, too, when the course of the
institute, which celebrated its 75th birthday in 1989/90, was changed from the outside
to the focus of Africa. Also details of dismissing the author after the
political change („Wende“) are elaborated by the editor of the volume. In the
volume, anthropologists of this time are portrayed, their publications listed
in the appendix, as well as diploma theses and dissertations. In this way,
research and scientific orientation of the institute become vivid, just as
decisive political processes, partly behind the scenes.

UHLIG, ANNE C.

Ethnographie der Gehörlosen. Kultur – Kommunikation – Gemeinschaft

Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag
2012

385 pp., Euro 29.80; ISBN 3-8376-1793-1

Keywords:
deafhood, culture of deaf, Deaf Nation, ethnicity of deaf

Ethnography of the deaf.
Culture – communication – community

Uhlig states that many deaf persons worldwide understand themselves to
belong to a global „Deaf Nation“. Despite the heterogeneity of their various
lifestyles and the utilization of various sign languages they have one
commonality: the primarily visual perception resulting in an altogether
different cultural production and socialization, different from the majority
society which has the sense of hearing. Uhlig uses the classical form of the
anthropological monograph to describe various aspects of deaf ethnicity, visual
culture, deaf kinship and systems of signification based on sign languages. She
discusses cultural effects of orality and signality as well as literature in sign
language, or the concept of deafhood, practices of encounter and meeting,
cycles of festivals, status and prestige generation – in the case of the German
deaf community.

The 30 papers of the book are result of the meeting of researchers
(DFG-Forschergruppe „Selbstzeugnisse in transkultureller Perspektive“ in
Berlin, 2010) towards the end of their mutual research period.

Testimonials of self are texts written by persons from various walks of
life starting from the late Middle Ages. They are numerous and appear in
different forms. Nowadays such autobiographical texts are considered to be very
important, and they are a crucial part in the biographical turn in the historical and cultural sciences.
Utilizing them it can be shown how their authors have constructed and situated
themselves in a specific culture as persons and selves. And it is acknowledged
that these texts had their effects on society as well: They founded, influenced
and reinforced power relations, and are witnesses of events of their time,
opening an anthropological dimension of historical events and processes. The
papers present hitherto unknown texts in scholarly editions.

This essay discusses „truth“ to be gained in pictures as conceptualized
in Laura Perini, Walter Oberschelp, and as a source of cognition in the social
sciences.

VOLZ, ANDREAS

Janiforme Darstellungen im interkulturellen Vergleich

Tribus 61.2012:114-155

Keywords:
Janus heads, museology

##Janiform Representations in
intercultural comparison

The Janus head is a powerful symbol in the cultures of the ancient
world. Usually the two heads are looking in opposite directions. The patron of
these kinds of sculptural representations is the Roman god Janus, the God of
the doors, who opens the way from the old to the new (January). Beside in
Europe we can find Janus-headed to sculptures in most parts of the world,
especially in Africa and Oceania. Although, formal similarities to the
dualistic concepts and ideas are obvious. But we can identify multiple and very
different forms of explanations, based on the particular cultural traditions,
their specific local philosophical, religious and ideological concepts.##

##What do nation states compete for? A historical-sociological per-spective on competition
for "soft" global goods

The
assumption of competition among nation-states is a well-established premise of
historical and sociological research on the modern state-system. The
literature, however, typically focuses on certain forms of competition: States
are seen as engaging in a continual power struggle for "hard" goods
such as territories and natural and human sources while competition for
"soft" ones such as attention, legitimacy, and the achievement of
prestige tends to be neglected. This paper draws attention to the latter goods
and presents a sociological model of public forms of competition that combines
Simmel's concept of competition with insights from communication theory, media,
and globalization research. This model draws attention to the influence of
external observers of the state system - universalized third part such as
international organizations, social scientists, and journalists - and to
different forms of competition created by such processes and third parties. On
this basis, the paper outlines three historical trends in competition between
nation states (and national collective identities) since the late 19th century:
competition for the prestige associated with modernity,
for the prestige gained by specific cultural achievement, and for attention/
legitimacy.##

Migration, difference, law
and pain. Social anthropological essays on a disappearing modernity, 1990-2010

Wicker analyzes, in 18 essays, present societal developments in
Switzerland, European countries, and lastly, in the world. He frames these
processes as increasingly complex, fragmented, and mobile. The first section
groups topics of migration, migration politics, and civil rights together. The
second section deals with flexibility, hybridity, authenticity, xenophobia, and
multiculturalism – processes of inclusion and exclusion. The third section
discusses the culturalization and discrimination of accused migrants in
criminal law suits, and those sentenced living in jails. The last part has
papers of a more general kind: pain and its meaning in postmodernity, torture
and spheres of power, and the societal function of posttraumatic stress
disorders.

39 papers deal with various aspects of the topic. They are based on a
2009 colloquium in Ludwigshafen, Germany. The editor sees culinaristics as
contribution of cultural and life sciences transcending disciplines – and as
related to dietary and food consumerism research. The topic is framed by
„hospitality“. The contributions describe concepts, foundations and worlds of
communication relating to hospitality, they analyze discourses, comment on
cultural specifics of hospitality behavior (e.g. in Islamic countries, in
China). And they throw light on numerous aspects of professional and
occupational hospitality in the context of culture, communication and kitchen,
politics and economy, philosophy and aesthetics, theology and medicine,
xenology and ritual research, tourism, and the aims of the system of dual
study.

WONISCH, REGINA& THOMAS HÜBEL(Eds.)

Museum und Migration. Konzepte – Kontexte – Kontroversen

Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag
2012

228 pp., Euro 27,80; ISBN
3-8376-1801-3

Keywords:
migration and museum, museum and migration

Museum and migration.
Concepts – contexts - controversies

Migration becomes a more frequent subject in exhibitions, and the
migration museum has beome a new type of museum. Analyses from Germany, France,
Austria and the Anglo-American field show how forms of the representation of
migration depend on societal and political framings and national narratives of
history.

On the sociology of
exhibition visits. Positions of sociological research on the inclusion and
exclusion of visitors in the field of art

##Art exhibitions are visited by an elite audience in terms of
education. Taking Pierre Bourdieu’s art theory as a starting point, the article
investigates sociological explanations for this phenomenon. The spectrum of
theories goes from structuralist approaches and studies of exhibitions as texts
to individualistic approaches. The article argues that all these approaches are
simplifying the phenomenon of visiting an art exhibition in one way or another
and are thus producing ideological positions on art and its audiences. The article
calls for more reflexivity of the sociological research on its own assumptions
and votes for a not ideologically charged empirical research program on art and
its audiences.##

ZEITSCHRIFT FÜR
KULTURAUSTAUSCH

Stuttgart: Institut für
Auslandsbeziehungen 62.2012

Keywords:
masculinity, rural life style, Mediterranean change, death and dying

##The aim of this article is to show the fruitful nexus between the
sociology of arts and the epistemology of practice. Epistemology provides arts
sociology with a theoretical framework for the empirical investigation of the
artistic creative process. Deeper sociological insights in turn may help
epistemology to locate practical artistic knowing within a socially
constituted, shared institutional sphere, which has alternatetively been called
the art world, the artistic field or system. In order to demonstrate this
nexus, the article analyzes the epistemological conception of knowledge and
highlights the specific assumption of the tacit knowing approach. Further, this
theoretical analysis is linked to methodological challenges that affect empirical
investigation. The particular research project based on case studies and
interviews focusing on the epistemic structure of literary writing aims to
deepen and substantiate the topic.##

AFRICA

ABBINK, JON(Ed.)

Fractures and reconnections:
Civic action and the redefinition of African political and economic spaces.
Studies in honor of Piet J.J. Konings

##The book contains original studies on civic action and sociopolitical
behavior in contemporary Africa, ranging from young entrepreneurship in
traditional medicine and confidence trickster practices two informal labor
relations and the problems of Democratization and electoral autho-ritarianism.
This collective volume thus collects to themes that are predominant in the work
of Dr. Piet Konings, a sociologist of development and Africanist at the African
Studies Centre in Leiden (1978-2008) and made major contributions to Ghana
studies and Cameroon studies. The chapters address in various forms and
mutations of contemporary civic action in the political, economic and social
domains off African societies, all based on original field research and
revealing unexpected dimensions of African socio-political life. The key themes
discussed by Piet Konings in his own work, such as labour relations, trade
union activities, African development and the impacts of ‚neo-liberalism’,
educational systems and politics, political and social history, the politics of
identity, ethno-regionalism, religious phenomena, and last but not least civil
society and civic movements, are reflected in the studies presented here. These
themes prove to be of undiminished relevance in Africa today, in the light of
the rapid economic developments since the early 2000s, persistent social
contestation, new forms of political claim-making which illustrate the as yet
unresolved problems of state performance and collective political identities.##

ANDRE, GERALDINE& MARIE GODIN

Le travail des enfants dans les mines artisanales du Katanga (RDC)

Tsantsa. Revue de la Societé Suisse d’ethnologie
17.2012:55-65

Keywords:
child labor, artisanal mining, agency, mining labor

##Children work in artisanal
and small-scale mining in the Katanga Province. Interdependencies and agency

How can one understand that sub-Saharan African children are currently
devoting themselves to dangerous and tenuous activities, such as artisanal and small-scale
mining (ASM)? Could child miners be considered asvictims, entangled in the neoliberal flow of
raw materials or could their trajectories result from choices progressively
made? Children’s agency will be the main focus of this article which presents
the results of a collective socio-anthropological research about „child labor“
in artisanal and small-scale mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo
(Katanga Province). This paper aims to grasp the mining activities of children
at the crossroad of different spheres of social relations in which the children
are included (relationships at work, with the family, with the development
world, and with the local community). From this viewpoint, the article
describes how children mining activities can contribute to collective dynamics
or if on the contrary, they overcome them.##

BEHRENDS, ANDREA& CAROLA LENTZ

Education, careers, and home
ties: The ethnography of an emerging middle class from northern Ghana

##Comparing three generations of highly educated men and women from a
marginalized region in Ghana, we discuss changing patterns of recruitment and
reproduction, the new middle class’s relations with the rural home region as
well as its members’ self-perceptions. Formal education and social networks
continue to be the most important resources of upward mobility, but the
educational requirements for success have risen, and entry into the national
labour market has become increasingly difficult. While all three generations balance
the exigencies of their careers with loyalties towards wider constituencies,
how they meet these challenges has changed.##

##This book explores the changing nature of risk in contemporary African
societies and contributes to current debates on the concept of risk.
Technological hazards, pollution and climate change as well as the introduction
of new forms of insurance and the restructuring of civil society are just some
of the recent developments that invite us to be skeptical of prevailing notions
of risk in the African context. The different contributions to this edited
volume move away from focusing on the vulnerability of pre-modern societies in
Africa and consider more localized and contemporary perspectives of risk. In
exploring new empirical approaches to risk in Africa the book addresses the
challenge of making theoretical and methodological advances in risk research
relevant to understanding the processes of social change on the continent.##

The „untold“ stories of
outsiders and their relevance for analyzing (post-) conflict situations.
Interviews with victims of collective violence in Northern Uganda (West Nile)

##We have conducted interviews with
women and men who are victims of collective violence in the region of West Nile
in northern Uganda, by the hands either of rebels or members of various
government armies. We show the position and relevancy of their perspectives in
public discourses in and about this region. Using biographical-narrative
interviews and group discussions, we highlight how their voices are subdued in
public discourses in which ex-rebels present themselves as victims of history.
The interviews illustrate that the narrative interview method is of help also
in this non-European research setting as it supports the interviewees to
verbalise what they have suffered. The analysis of how collective violence is
thematised in the interviews as well as in public discourses brings about
important insights into the perspectivity and the biases of these discourses –
and how these were generated. For this reason (amongst others), it is
important, when analyzing the region’s recent history as well as (post-)conflict
figurations in general to accommodate the biographical experiences of victims
of collective violence.##

BRAUKMANN, FABIENNE

Marginalised hunters?
Political and cultural challenges among the Haro of Lake Abaya (southern Ethiopia)

Paideuma 58.2012:181-196

Keywords:
hunters, Haro, subsistence, hippopotamus hunters

##Having previously lived as hippopotamus hunters on Lake Abbaya, the
Haro diversified their subsistence strategies through the 20th Century. Their
specific geographical situation played a key role regarding their invisibility
to urban populations and the nation state. Their integration into Ethiopian
society was hardly made possible, which explains how the Haro maintain their
strong identity as hippopotamus hunters till this day. The fact that they
choose to be located on the periphery of the Ethiopian state demands a
differentiated understanding of their marginalised status from two two-fold
perspective.##

EPPLE, SUSANNE

Local responses to
externally induced cultural change. The introduction of formal education in
Bashada (southern Ethiopia)

##Like many of their ethnic neighbours, the Bashada are
agro-pastoralists and have been living relatively isolated from the modern
world until one or two decades ago. Recently more and more changes have been
introduced from the outside which are having an increasing impact on the daily
lives of the people. One of these transformations is the introduction of formal
education. The construction of numerous schools and increasing pressure by the
the government to enrol more children, especially girls, is forcing the Bashada
to respond and react. The paper shows that so far the Bashada have been able to
be selective in accepting what they consider useful and in rejecting what seems
harmful to their children, as well as to the core values of their culture.##

##The aim of this collection of papers this to contribute to the
discussion concerning the compatibility of cultural diversity with the concepts
of human rights and development in the light of certain experiences in
Ethiopia. Since the overthrow of the military and socialist regime in 1991,
Ethiopia has undergone enormous changes with respect to the political process,
development efforts and international relations. The introduction of ethnic
federalism promises the equality of all of its more than eighty ethnic groups,
and cultural diversity is publicly celebrated. However, it appears that the
agenda of fast national development has led to apparent conflicts between
continuity and change, as well as between tradition and modernity. This
collection of papers highlights some contradictions and inconsistencies within
Ethiopian laws and policies, as well as clashes between certain policies and
particular cultural values and practices at the local level. The implementation
some some of these policies caused resistance on the part of the local
communities against certain – from their perspective – new developments, and
this resistance led in turn to different forms of pressure applied by the government
and non-governmental institutions to ensure compliance. The individual papers
provide insights into local perspectives, experiences and reactions to
perceived pressure and induced cultural change, ranging from smooth transition
to new forms of life, to confusion and reluctance or partial involvement, to
negotiated compromise and strict legal enforcement.##

FICHTNER, SARAH

The NGOisation of education.
Case studies from Benin

(Mainzer Beiträge zur
Afrikaforschung 31)

Köln: Köppe Verlag 2012

196 pp., Euro 35.80; ISBN
3-89645-832-2

Keywords:
NGOs, education and NGOs, Global South

##The NGOisation of education has emerged both as driving mechanism and
as a consequence of the globalisation of public services that increased
tremendously during the peak of neoliberal global governance in the long 1980s.
Since then, international development agencies have recognized the comparable
advantage of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) over state institutions for
being ostensibly less corrupt, more efficient, and for their ability to
maintain closer relationships with the ‚target populations’. Currently, NGOs’ development
aid in the field of education involves primarily the promotion, marketing, and
management of global models, norms and standards, and to a much lesser extent
the provision of resources and services to ‚the poor’. This development-driven
promotion of norms, i.e. shared, evaluative expectations of behaviour regarding
how beneficiaries of aid should develop and manage their own development, takes
place at the very heart of the state as well as at its margins. Based on the
four case studies from the West African country of Benin, Sarah Fichtner
examines the processes of the NGOisation from an empirical perspective. She
provides a counter-perspective to essentialist and exoticising essays on the
African state, as well as to econometric and world-culturalist approaches to
education in the Global South.##

Verbal art of the Tuareg.
Interaction and sociability among Sahara nomads

This fieldwork-based study deals with those people calling themselves
Imuhaṛ, living in Southern Algeria. There are introductions to history,
geography, society, grammar, and linguistic research. Fischer reflects on her
fieldwork, introduces linguistic anthropology (in the Sahara, „linguistic
nomadology“), and the ethnography of speaking. Fischer shows how the art of
conversation among Tuareg is adapted to their nomadic lifestyle, agreeing with
S.J. Rasmussen, who saw Tuareg „skill in indirect verbal expression“ in dealing
with conflict, and that they „articulate grievances euphemistically“. The book
is then organized according to „conversation in linguistic portrait“, which
includes spatial, time, and social dimensions, the repertoire and capacity of
speaking, camouflaged speaking, verbal rituals codifications, secret language,
riddles etc. – all of which is exemplified in concrete persons during
fieldwork. The last chapter has examples dealing with social values, concepts
of avoidance, sociability, norms of verbal interaction etc. The appendix has a
Tamahaq-German glossary. The book includes many black-and-white photographs.

FRAHM, OLE

Defining the nation:
National identity in south Sudanese media discourse

##This article examines debates about national identity in the media
landscape of post-referendum and post-independence South Sudan. Having never
existed as a sovereign state and with its citizens being a minority group in
Sudan, collective action amongst south Sudanese has historically been shaped in
response to external pressures: in particular, the aggressive nation-building
pursued by successive Khartoum governments that sought to Arabize and Islamize
the south. Today, in the absence of a clear-cut enemy, it is a major challenge
for south Sudan to devise a common identity that unites the putative nation
beyond competing loyalties to ethnicity, tribe and family. Analysing opinion
pieces from south Sudanese online media and placing them in the context of
contemporary African nationalism, this article gives an initial overview of the
issues that dominate the public debate on national identity: fear of tribalism
and regionalism, commemoration of the liberation struggle, and the role of
Christianity.##

##Urban agglomerations host the most vital and creative societies. This
applies particularly to Africa, where cities have the highest growth rates worldwide
and where the urban population is younger than anywhere else. Urban life-worlds
are the basis for the development of new lifestyles and new cultural phenomena.
Based on empirical ethnographic research, this book presents case studies that
enhance our understanding of the dynamics of urbanity in Africa and beyond – by
envisioning cities as crossroads where cultures, biographies networks meet.##

Fiction and truth in
transition. Writing the present past in South Africa and Argentina

(Freiburg studies in social
anthropology 34)

Wien: Lit Verlag 2012

517 pp., Euro 49.90; ISBN 3-643-80122-7

Keywords:
fiction and reality, fiction and ethnography, investigation by fiction

##What can fiction tell us about the world that journalism and science
cannot? This simple, vast question is the starting-point for an interrogation
of the relationship between literary fiction and society’s dramatic
transformation in South Africa and Argentina over the past two, three decades.
The resulting discursive text borders on both journalism and literature,
incorporating reportage, essay and memoir.##

The book has three major parts: Premises (theoretical aspects, namely
„the writer as researcher“ and „the anthropological turn“ being a recourse to
Writing Culture, ethnography and fieldwork in general in which the author names
a number of literary examples; then the South African, and the part of
Argentina. The latter two deal with culture-context-specific issues: In the
case of South Africa public space, reinventing history, reconciliation and
others are discussed, all the while analyzing literary cases, and for Argentina
the same method is followed. A final chapter discusses „fiction and social
change“, the role of fiction as a „means of investigation“.

ILLE, ENRICO

The classification of drinking water between public administration and
rural communities in South Kordofan, Sudan. Travelling models and technologies

##This article discusses different
technologies used to classify water as potable or non-potable in South
Kordofan, Sudan. The case of a water pump in the village Abol is presented to
show how different actors dealt with the uncertain situation, when changes in
the water coming from the pump caused doubt about its potability. Officials in
South Kordofan’s public administration system attempted to follow the model
procedures for such a case, but failed to produce a relevant link between their
results and Abol’s community of water users. The water users reacted in
different ways to the situation, due to their different belief systems and
their unequal practical options. The article employs the terminology of
‘travelling models’ as developed by Richard Rottenburg (Rottenburg 2005; 2009)
in analysing this heterogeneity in the face of a joint problem.##

In African film, white roles are often filled with Africans, and these
roles become a space of imagination which enable to stage planning games. The
author shows that African film directors use the stage as a space for
negotiation, experimenting with postcolonial situations like colonial heritage,
neocolonial structures, or the hegemony of western media. In the course of
presenting and discussing about a dozen films, African and European ones (like Les maîtres fous by Jean Rouch) in the
light of various discourses relating to film and media – and informed by
philosophy, literature, reflexivity – Kilian has concluded that in African
movies, Africans in the roles of whites are a performative act because in each
of these cases the signification of skin color, which in western countries is
subject to restrictive categories, is refuted. In the films analyzed black
actors contribute to reveal possibilities of action discussed by Helmuth
Plessner in his Anthropology of the film
actor (1948).

KLEINITZ, CORNELIA& CLAUDIA NÄSER(Eds.)

„Nihna nâs al-bahar – We are
the people of the river.“ Ethnographic research in the Fourth Nile Cataract
Region, Sudan

## This volume is a tribute to the people of the Fourth Cataract, past
and present. By evaluating the conditions of dam construction, the ‚salvage’ of
heritage, and the fate of the affected communities from various perspectives,
it aims to call into question the valuation of the past over the present, of
the dead over the living, in current salvage practice in Sudan. As many more
people along the middle Nile valley face forced resettlement and the loss of
their cultural identity, this volume is also a contribution to the critical
discussion of the benefits and the human costs of major infrastructural
development projects in Sudan and beyond.##

KLEINITZ, CORNELIA& CLAUDIA NÄSER: Introduction

BECK, KURT: Crisis, innovation and the
social domestication of the new: One century of Manâsîr social history

HABERLAH, DAVID: Cultural landscape of Dar
al-Manasir

WESCHENFELDER, PETRA: Manâsîr women’s
contributions to economic and social life: A case study from Kirbekân in Dar
al-Manâsîr

RESHETNIKOVA, NADEJDA: Recent domestic
architecture in the area between Dar el Arab and Dar el Waraaq at the Fourth
Nile Cataract

WELSH, FRANCES: Remarks on village
architecture in the et-Tereif Region at the Fourth Nile Cataract